The Ring and the Book
by Eildon Rhymer
Summary: While writing about his discovery of the Ring, Bilbo grapples with the temptation to tell a false tale.


**The Ring and the Book**

_While writing about his discovery of the Ring, Bilbo grapples with the temptation to tell a false tale. _

This was written for Back to Middle Earth Month 2014. It was written for a picture prompt, the picture showing a ring resting on an open book.

* * *

The ring rested on the open book. Candles flickered, sending sparks of light across the written words. In the candlelight, the ring cast a shadow, darkening the words that lay behind it. The words it rested upon were reflected in its golden surface, but warped and changed.

Bilbo brought his hand down softly on the page, his fingertip stroking the smooth circle of gold. The pen was in his right hand, the ink drying cold. The flow of words had dried even colder. With a sigh, he pushed the ring tenderly away, revealing the words he had already written; revealing, too, the blank space that still remained at the end of the page.

A blank space. It was his to fill.

He dipped the pen again, shaking away the excess ink. "Where was I?" he asked himself. He knew, of course. "Oh, yes," he said brightly, pretending to himself that he was only just remembering.

Round and round went his fingertip on the ring. Round and round. Round and round.

He was under the Misty Mountains, separated from his companions, lost in the dark. His head was throbbing, and he was crawling, desperate and alone. Then, beneath his outstretched hand, he had felt…

"Nothing," he found himself saying, as his finger traced its way round and round. "I found nothing." A speck of ink fell from his frozen pen. His other hand slapped down on the ring, then the fingers curled in, cherishing it close against his curled palm. He hunched low, and darted a look over his shoulder. Was someone there, someone watching at the window? Was someone looking for it, his own ring, his treasure, his precious?

The candle guttered, shying away from the urgency of his movements. He let out a slow breath. "No-one there," he said. "No-one there." But he kept the ring hidden, and he started to write a story in which he had beaten Gollum fair and square; a story in which he had never found a ring. It was what he had told the dwarves, wasn't it? It was true, or almost true. You couldn't recount everything in a history of your life. You missed out little details like the colour of your socks, and the trivial things you and your companions said about the weather, and the endless description of an unchanging road. Thorin and the dwarves were the main story, and Gandalf and Smaug and the great battle. What was the ring but a tiny, tiny detail, one that nobody needed to know?

He felt the ring against his palm, smooth and beautiful, warmed by his skin. i_Not tiny/i, _it told him. He longed to gaze at it again. He burned to keep it secret. He raised his hand just enough to see it, gleaming on the black-ink words, but still sheltered by the shield that was his hand. "I have to keep it secret," he said. "If I write it down, the secret is…"

His words trailed away. He closed his eyes; opened them again. He looked at the page, and saw that there was nothing there. The ink had run out many lines ago, and all he had written of his lies was specks and scratches. As far as the ink knew, he was still beneath the Misty Mountains, crawling along, his hand outstretched and about to find…

"No," he said out loud, firm and strong. He was writing the truth. He had to write the truth.

The candle flickered. He pushed it away, out of reach of his agitated breathing. The ring was special, his precious treasure. He had to include it, for it was the heart of all stories. He scooped it up with a gentle hand, then turned his hand over, and uncurled his fingers, letting the ring lie in his open palm. So beautiful, it was. So beautiful! Then he carefully put it down on the page again, and watched the reflected words dance on its curved surface. They looked like words in no language he had ever seen.

"It was a present," he found himself saying. He dipped the pen again, and held it over the ink well, bleeding black. "A birthday…" No, not a birthday present. But Gollum had offered to wager the ring: yes, yes, that was what had happened. It was a present, a prize, a reward. Bilbo had already found the ring by then, of course, but that was just a trivial detail. Gollum had intended all along to give it to him for free. Gollum _wanted_ him to have it. It was Bilbo's by right. It was his. It was his.

He put his pen to paper, and wrote a word, then another, then another. The ring slid across the page, scooping up words in its reflecting gold.

Bilbo's pen froze. _I don't know what to write! _he thought, and for a moment, his heart trembled with terror. He could barely remember what was truly real. He remembered the ring, of course, but beyond that, it was fading. Everything was fading.

What was truth? Bilbo was writing an account of his own deeds, and things he had seen with his own eyes. But sometimes, all he had known was the all-encompassing reality of his own terror. He was just a hobbit, and he had missed so much. The dwarves had tales that he would never understand. Gandalf had disappeared halfway through the journey, and done… what? Bilbo was writing history through the eyes of a sheltered hobbit who had understood so little of what he had seen.

Were the goblins writing their own histories, in which they were the heroes, and Bilbo and his companions were the inexplicable enemy? To scholars of the future, would everything Bilbo had seen and done be a mere irrelevance in some greater tale, a tale that would only become clear to eyes that looked back from a hundred years in the future? In the tale of years, the memories of one small hobbit were such a flawed and tiny thing. What did it matter, those little details of how he had come to own one small, insignificant ring?

He looked at the words he had already written, each one true, each one… no, not false, but perhaps telling only one, marred strand of a tale that would never be complete. He looked at the dark nib of his pen, clogged with dried-up ink. "Why am I doing this?" he said.

The ring reflected his written words back to him, each one changed.

Bilbo let out a slow breath. He scooped up the ring, cherished it awhile in his palm, and tucked it back into his pocket. He dragged the candle forward, letting light wash over his written words.

"How can I not?" he said. It was only one marred thread, true, but it was his story, and it was one that only he could tell. There were other tales and other truths, but in the great weaving of history, his story would play its own small part. For the first time ever, a hobbit's voice would be heard. He would tell his tale, and he would make it as true as he could.

Perhaps unbidden, his left hand rose to his pocket, to press against the fabric there, to feel the hard round shape that lay within.

_But not yet, _he thought, as he turned away from the candlelight. He turned over a page, and then another and another, leaving half a dozen blank pages. Then he dipped his pen, and wrote about wolves and spiders, and truth, as far as he could judge it.

And the rest of it…? The missing pages…? _Later, _he thought, as he pressed his left hand to his pocket. _Soon._

* * *

The end

* * *

**Note**: This was inspired by the fact that the early editions of The Hobbit - i.e. those published before Tolkien started writing The Lord of the Rings - included a very different version of Bilbo's discovery of the Ring. Tolkien changed things later, to reflect his recent discoveries about the true nature of the Ring. The changes were rationalised as reflecting Bilbo's initial reluctance to give a truthful account of what had happened.


End file.
